the one with the tumor. make a wish has really touched me. >> reporter: cancer makes gabriella physically weak, her speech altered. you can hear her strength in every word. >> i want to say one more thing, this is my motto and i think you could use it too. you might have a bad day today but there's always a bright side to look forward to tomorrow. the good side. what's your bright side? thank you. happy holidays. >> reporter: it's impossible to calculate a love that started in a little girl's heart, travels around the world -- >> isn't she fantastic? >> reporter: and returns with the immeasurable gift of hope. >> such a sweet girl. her motto, you might have a bad day today but there's always a bright start to look forward to tomorrow. really, always a very sweet little girl who is doing very good around her. thanks for watching this program. "cnn presents:the mystery of

"cnn presents:the mystery of jesus" starts right now. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com ♪ three men were crucified on a hill. two of the men were thieves. the third man's crime was marked by the sign nailed to his cross. "jesus of nazareth, king of the jews." jesus himself insisted his throne was in heaven, not of this world. but that didn't matter. the romans saw him as a political nuisance. to his fellow jews, he was just another failed messiah. no one even thought to record his death. the story of jesus has transcended generations and cultures.

the tale of a routine execution that gave birth to a new religion. yet from that unlikely beginning a great faith was born. and today some 2 billion people believe jesus was the son of god. but even as billions of people pledge themselves to follow jesus' teachings, we have known almost nothing about jesus, the man. no other great religious figure, from moses to the buddha to the prophet muhammad, is so shrouded in mystery. >> it's very difficult to classify jesus within a single category, whether he was a sage or a healer or a teacher or a charismatic figure. and i suspect the most accurate response to the question, "who was jesus at the time?" would be a mixture of all of these different identifications. >> the startling discovery of what some claim to be the burial box of jesus' brother james

reopened the biggest detective story of all time -- the mystery of jesus, the man. the plain limestone container, called an ossuary, is inscribed with a tantalizing clue in aramaic, the language jesus spoke. "james, son of joseph, brother of jesus." the public was enthralled. from people who flocked to see the ossuary on display to biblical scholars around the world. could this be the first physical evidence that jesus walked the earth? so when the israeli authorities alleged, eight months after its discovery, that the ossuary's inscription was forged, the centuries-old quest for the historical jesus became ever more urgent. did he have a real brother? was mary really a virgin? how did jesus live, and why did he have to die? who was jesus, the man?

why is the greatest story ever told also the greatest mystery never solved? almost all we know about jesus' life comes to us from the four books of the gospels called mark, matthew, luke and john. yet the gospels were written anywhere between 40 and 70 years after jesus died, and with an eye to converting people. >> the gospels weren't meant to be historically accurate accounts in the way we would think of. they weren't written according to our standards of biographical accuracy. they were meant to proclaim the good news of jesus' life, death and resurrection. >> one of the stories that historians are debating is the christmas card scene of his humble birth in a manger, heralded by a star in the east and attended by three wise men. it's only mentioned by matthew and luke, and they don't always agree. so is any of it true?

scholars say yes -- to a degree. >> when we look at the gospel of matthew and the gospel of luke, we can see that there are about 12 pieces of information, 12 facts that they share in common that they both know about jesus' early years. they both know that his mother is mary, that the father or stepfather is joseph, that they're from the family of david, that the birth took place in bethlehem. so they have this string, a skeleton of information about the very formative years of jesus and his conception. but they don't have much beyond that. ♪ >> sadly, the birthplace of the man christians call the prince of peace is often a war zone, as it has been for centuries.

but the manger that generations of pilgrims have sought out is a bit of a shock -- a stone grotto that doesn't look much like a cozy stable. ♪ caves like this one pockmark the region where bethlehem lies. but one scholar suggests that we've got the wrong address. there is another bethlehem, one that borders joseph and mary's home territory of nazareth. >> that suggests to me that this is the bethlehem that we ought to be looking at instead of bethlehem of judea. >> it is unlikely that this argument is going to trump centuries of tradition that point to the bethlehem of faith. >> it is a historical place, revered for centuries by the faithful. it is the place where it is celebrated jesus was born. that's enough for me in my

devotion. it's not enough for me as a scientist. >> and what of the other great tradition of the first christmas, the star in the east? was it a myth? or did it really exist? astronomer michael mulnar may have found the answer on a 2,000-year-old coin he bought a few years ago for $50. on one side, mulnar noticed the astrological sign for aries, which stood for judea in ancient astrology. on the other side was the god jupiter. >> when i came across the coin that showed me that aries the ram was the sign of the jews, and i asked myself, well, what event would have happened in aries the ram? >> so, armed with a computer and charts of the ancient heavens, mulnar started plotting the course of jupiter in the constellation of aries around the time of jesus' birth. and he suddenly hit the mother

of all celestial alignments. >> according to the beliefs of 2,000 years ago, if you have the sun, jupiter and moon, accompanied by saturn in the sign of aries the ram, this created the conditions for the birth of a divine and immortal person. >> if there was a star in the east, that would have been it. just when, exactly, did this star appear? mulnar did some more calculations. >> the computer came back with only one answer. it said it happened only once in aries the ram. that was april 17th, 6 b.c. >> christmas in april? jesus born six years before we thought? it's likely true, since king herod, who went on a murderous rampage when he heard of jesus' birth, died in 4 b.c. but after his birth, jesus largely disappears from view, and the mysteries of his early life deepen.

who were jesus' parents, his brothers and sisters? just how did jesus grow up? >> jesus was probably doing what most other teenagers were doing -- honing their job skills, meeting other people, helping to support the family, learning what he could about his community and his tradition. >> his tradition was jewish, and his community was the village of nazareth in rural galilee. just as the ancient prophets had said, the messiah would be a nazarene. [ male announcer ] alka-seltzer plus presents the cold truth. i have a cold, and i took nyquil, but i'm still "stubbed" up. [ male announcer ] truth is, nyquil doesn't unstuff your nose. what? [ male announcer ] it doesn't have a decongestant. no way. [ male announcer ] sorry. alka-seltzer plus fights your worst cold symptoms plus has a fast acting decongestant to relieve your stuffy nose. [ sighs ] thanks! [ male announcer ] you're welcome. that's the cold truth! [ male announcer ] alka-seltzer plus. ♪ oh what a relief it is! ♪ [ male announcer ] to learn more about the cold truth

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nazareth in the first century was just a small town in rural galilee, a world away from cosmopolitan jerusalem 100 miles down the road.

yet it was here, the gospel of st. luke tells us, that an angel of the lord appeared to mary and told her something extraordinary. she was going to be the mother of god's son. but what do we know about this woman who would change the course of history? >> we don't know very much about mary. we get little tantalizing snapshots. and from those tantalizing snapshots, she appears to be a lively, intelligent, but basically down-to-earth woman. >> and maybe not a woman at all when she bore jesus, but a girl with a remarkable life ahead of her. >> mary was very young when she became pregnant with jesus. she was probably just in her mid-teens. which meant that by the time jesus was doing his public ministry, maybe she was 45. >> joseph, jesus' earthly father, is perhaps the most mysterious figure of all.

by the time jesus has begun his public ministry, joseph has vanished from the story. that has led to speculation that joseph, a carpenter by trade, was many years older than mary. life in the nazareth of jesus' day was hard. today, a group of biblical scholars and archaeologists have built nazareth village to give a better sense of just what daily life in the nazareth of jesus' time was like. >> there were no paved streets. there were no luxuries of any kind. the houses are made of fieldstones that are insulated with mud and straw. it was a very basic kind of hand-to-mouth existence. ♪ >> it was also an existence that closely followed the rituals of jewish life. in fact, the only time the gospels mentioned jesus as a boy

is during a visit to the temple in jerusalem. this visit would have made an enormous impression on a devout 12-year-old from the hinterland. >> jerusalem was the place where, particularly at festival times, people always hoped that maybe now god was going to do something dramatic. that sort of sense is in the air that you get there and it's going to happen, the new thing is going to be born. >> jesus sat with the teachers of the law, the great rabbis, the ones who ran the academies in jerusalem, and had deep, detailed discussions about the hebrew bible, the old testament with them. and these teachers and rabbis looked at this kid and said, this kid has a real gift. we should sign him up. let's get him to enroll. he's wasted up there in nazareth. >> it was a mission, the gospels say, that jesus thought more important than his earthly family. for when they had departed for nazareth, jesus was still in the temple. >> and on the way home, mary and joseph suddenly realized after a

few days that jesus is missing. this always struck me as somewhat like "home alone." and they come back and they discover him in the temple. and mary is very upset and says, how could you do this? >> jesus, in his 12-year-old, know-it-all state says, "well, didn't you know, i needed to be about my father's business?" and he understands that his destiny is somehow here. the temple is where he belongs, discussing these religious issues is what he is supposed to do. >> how could mary and joseph fail to notice jesus was missing? did this mean that the family was so large, a child like jesus could just disappear? the gospels speak of jesus' four brothers, james, joseph, judas and simon, and at least two sisters. but many believe that mary remained a virgin all her life, and that these siblings were either stepchildren from joseph's earlier marriage or cousins. scholars who have read the text closely say that doesn't seem to

be the case, and they don't need the controversial ossuary to make their point. >> the word that's used of james' and jesus' other siblings, the greek word for "brother," is the word for "brother." some people thought, well, maybe they're cousins, for example. well, there is a greek word for cousin and that's not the word that's used here. >> the theological questions are profound. and the debate is a difficult one. especially if you're a jesuit and a scientist like tom fitzpatrick. >> i don't know if we're ever going to get to a definitive answer that satisfies every question or every person on this. it's been a very important doctrine mystery for the church over 2,000 years. it's not the most important doctrine. >> just as fascinating as jesus' family tree is the debate over just what jesus looked like.

this certainly isn't a matter of doctrine, but it has always been a source of intense speculation. a centuries-old guessing game that science tells us is way off the mark. >> i could never reconcile myself to him having long blond hair and blue eyes, because he comes from a part of the world where people are basically rather swarthy, with dark hair and dark eyes. >> so what then does science say is the true face of the son of god? ♪

hello, i'm natalie warren with tonight's top news stories. officials in upstate new york are calling it a deadly ambush. four firefighters were shot while responding to an early morning blaze in the town of webster. two of the firefighters were killed. the other two are in intensive care. the gunman committed suicide. the governor described shootings as horrific. this, ten days after adam lanza murdered 28 people in now doewt connecticut. it is the countdown to the fiscal cliff. the president and the house speak remember refusing to budge. both sides are taking a break

but will return to washington on thursday to try to work out a deal. and keeping watch of st. nick and keeping with the christmas spirit, norad is tracking santa. last reports have the jolly guy in red making his way across africa. by the way, the norad tradition of following santa goes back decades, having started in 1955. i'm natalie adam with a look at the headlines this christmas eve. now back to "the mystery of jesus." ♪ ♪ hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah ♪ trying to figure out what jesus really looked like has preoccupied christians for centuries. and legions of artists have stayed busy trying to supply the answer.

♪ for the lord god omnipotent reigneth ♪ >> but the difficulty in trying to flesh out the image of jesus is that his contemporaries considered his message, not his looks, all important. also, judaism forbids the worship of images and idols, especially of someone claiming to be god. of course, that did not stop christians from imagining how jesus looked. ♪ for the lord god omnipotent reigneth ♪ >> he was first depicted as a triumphant sun god, like apollo. since then, jesus has been re-imagined by every generation and movies have never tired of portraying him, from "jesus christ superstar" to the brooding artist in "jesus of montreal" to the smiling buddy christ of the film "dogma." ♪ hallelujah

>> jesus is not, as far as i can tell historically, the blonde, blue-eyed max von sydow version or even jeffrey hunter who we get from the movies. >> i think he would have looked very much like what we know by the term "hippies." >> now we may be able to literally put some flesh on the bones of centuries of guessing. that's what the noted medical and forensic artist richard neave did when biblical scholars gave him a copy of a skull from the first century, found in the present-day israel. they wanted to get an idea of what a man of jesus' time and place might have looked like. >> it is a strong skull. and to live satisfactorily, especially the kind of life that jesus led, you're going to have to be a fairly tough, rugged kind of fellow. you know, he walked miles. he carried his staff. he could be flogged. he could carry his cross.

i mean, you know, that takes a lot of physical strength and determination. and so he's not a wimp. >> neave has spent nearly 30 years reconstructing the heads of mystery people -- anonymous murder victims, ancient archeological finds and suicides. but how would he approach a recreation of a face from 2,000 years ago? >> it's done in exactly the same way as you would handle a forensic case. there's absolutely no difference, except that in this case, a nice clean, prepared cast, rather than the original skull. then you make a copy of that, and that's mounted onto a metal stand. pegs are inserted into the skull at specific anatomical points, and these indicate the average thickness of tissue that you are going to get, say, there or there or there. >> neave's skull was rendered into an image by the bbc, and further developed by the artist

donato giancola, with the help of neave and biblical scholars. the result is a startling image -- nothing like the jesus that history has imagined. >> the nose is quite prominent, and a full mouth, a youngish face, between 30 and 40, i suppose. >> neave stresses that his jesus' head is not "the" jesus' head. at best, it represents a face that jesus himself might have seen or had. and still it attracts debate. >> i've had one or two comments from people suggesting that it doesn't look anything like jesus which, of course, doesn't surprise me. they actually, some of them, do go on to say that they know exactly what jesus does look like, because they took a photograph of him only three weeks ago. >> even though science has given us a better idea of what jesus might have really looked like, jesus' face wouldn't matter were it not for what he said and what

he did. and the gospels tell us, in a surprisingly short time, just three years. what was the message of this carpenter's son from galilee? and why did it get him killed?

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♪ when jesus suddenly re-emerged into the public eye, so the gospels tell us, he was about 30 years old. and he had a powerful mission -- to rock the ancient world with his teachings. his public ministry would last just three years. but in that brief span, this obscure galilean carpenter would rouse such passion that his followers would call him not just the son of man, but the son of god. so who was jesus? a faith healer? a rebel? the messiah? >> some scholars think that he

was principally to be understood as a jewish rabbi. some think that he was better understood as a social revolutionary, or even a political revolutionary. some people think that he was an ancient philosopher, jewish philosopher. and probably the majority of scholars continue to think he was best understood as a kind of jewish apocalyptic prophet. >> but jesus the prophet was not alone in his search for souls to save. scholars tell us the landscape was teeming with jewish groups, each with their own take on god's word. one such sect, the essings, were apocalyptic jews who lived in the desert by the dead sea. when their writings were discovered in the caves of kumron in 1948, we suddenly gained startling new clues about jesus' own spiritual roots. >> we have from kumron just a small bit of a manuscript that shows us that there were other jews, just before the time of

jesus, who were waiting for a messiah who would exert miraculous and healing power, and who would also have the power to raise the dead. and jesus embraces that messianic expectation. >> and it began with a baptism, as the gospels tell us, performed by the man who tradition and scholarship say was jesus' cousin and boyhood friend. john the baptist lived in the wilderness wearing camel skins, eating locusts and wild honey, and baptizing people in the jordan river to cleanse them of their sins. this was a radical new spin on the jewish purification bath. john was turning an ancient ritual into a new sacrament. >> john the baptist. he recognized jesus at the baptism. and he said, this is the man i've been waiting for, this is the person i'm preparing the way for. and he expected jesus to be the messiah of israel. >> and that's the message jesus took to the jewish people. as the gospels tell us, he

returned home, found his first disciples among galilean fishermen. and soon he called attention to himself, by casting out demons, and healing the sick. >> those healings would have attracted greater and greater crowds, and those crowds then would have provided the base for jesus' other teachings. was jesus a healer and an exorcist? oh, i think so. quite a good one, in fact. >> a healer, an exorcist and soon, a miracle worker. according to the gospel of john, jesus' first big public miracle was at the wedding at kana, turning the water to wine, and saving his friend's party. science can never say whether a miracle really happened, but scholars say there would be no mistaking the message that jesus was sending. >> in turning water to wine at the wedding in kana, he's saying, i'm the bridegroom of the great messianic banquet that god is going to have one day,

and the bridegroom has arrived on the scene. >> the miracles kept coming -- the loaves and fishes, raising lazarus from the dead, walking on water, and repelling satan. but magicians and healers and exorcists were everywhere in the middle east in those days. >> we have various accounts of miracle workers, both pagan as well as jewish, in the first century. the book of acts presents, for example, other exorcists who were not part of jesus' contingent, but they do seem to be successful exorcists. >> we can put jesus on a continuum of other healers, but he still breaks the mold. he does more than they do and more frequently. >> and more than miracles, jesus reached beyond social boundaries to include women prominently among his disciples. one woman who has followed jesus has become second only to his mother in the story of his life. yet mary magdalene has not exactly been regarded as a virgin.

>> christian tradition depicts mary magdalene as a prostitute, but she's never called a prostitute in the new testament, or indeed in the first couple centuries of christianity. the most we know about her is that she's independent. luke tells us that she was possessed by seven demons and had been exorcised by jesus. so perhaps she followed him because he had performed a healing for her. other than that, mary is an independent woman. prostitute? no reason to think so. >> but what was she to jesus? could jesus have been married to mary magdalene, as some legends have it, or to anyone else? >> we have no indication in the gospel tradition that jesus is married. would it have been unusual for a jewish man to have been unmarried? no, not at all. >> whatever the details of jesus' personal life, to his fellow jews, what he said was as important as what he did. he gave them a radical agenda, scholars say, one in which society's outcasts could play a central role.

its manifesto promised that the powerful will be brought low and the meek would inherit the earth. the sermon on the mount was an edgy message at a volatile time. >> the thought of jesus going up into the hills with his followers and giving them special teaching has a kind of a revolutionary flavor to it. my goodness, we're being prepared to do something. this is not just some lessons that will help us say our prayers a bit better, though it will. it will go much more than that. it is setting an agenda for a whole movement and how it is going to go. >> the gospels tell us that jesus as the messiah had huge appeal for the masses. here finally was someone who could liberate the jews from a century of roman rule. >> jews in particular thought that this land that they occupied had been given them by god. the idea that some other power was controlling this land was considered not only to be a political nightmare, it was also thought to be theologically blasphemous. >> and if jesus is preaching the kingdom of god, he is clearly

preaching something antithetical to the normative kingdom, which is the kingdom of rome. >> and if that wasn't enough, the gospels tell us, jesus then took his disciples and his message to jerusalem, the heart of judaism and a roman political power. the fuse was primed, the people wanted a savior. >> and as they sit here on this mount of olives, where we are today, they say, okay, now are you going to set up the kingdom? we're waiting. we want to rule. >> and then no sooner had jesus' ministry begun, it was over. jesus was now reviled as a common criminal, deserted by the people who had once hailed him as the messiah. was it prophecy or politics that set jesus out to die? [ woman ] ring. ring. progresso.

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i'm natalie allen at cnn world headquarters in atlanta. deal or no deal? it is the fiscal cliff countdown and time is running out. if president obama and house speaker boehner don't strike a deal by new year's, you'll be paying higher taxes. while both sides play the blame game in washington, wall street takes a tumble today, with jittery investors selling off stocks. we are learning new details about the man who shot two firefighters to death in upstate new york today. police say william spangler killed the firefighters and wounded two others while they were responding to an early morning blaze. spangler, who committed suicide at the scene, was convicted in 1981 of killing his grandmother. authorities still don't have a motive for today's shooting. and millions face a christmas filled with extreme weather. forecasters are warning of a potential tornado outbreak across the south tomorrow. the severe storm system could then bring more dangerous

weather from florida all the way up to virginia. that's a quick look at the top headlines. i'm natalie allen in atlanta. now back to "the mystery of jesus." ♪ jesus came back to jerusalem, the gospels tell us, during passover. as a devout jew, he had been to the great temple many times before with his family. but now he came at a politically charged time with a provocative message. >> passover is the feast of freedom. the city has swelled with well over a million pilgrims. there's a concern for roman occupation.

pilate has brought his troops into the city. anybody who talks about the kingdom of god, and even more, anybody about whom the word goes out, this is a new king, is clearly a political liability. >> and not just a liability to the romans, but to the jewish hierarchy led by their high priest, ciaiphus. in one of the most vivid passages in the gospels, a furious jesus enters the temple to cleanse it of the money changers he finds there. >> overturning the temple tables of the money changers and all of the offerings that were being sold. which was the necessary business of temple work. was a direct prophetic assault on the religious institution. in a way, he was saying that a new era was beginning. this was about as much as the religious authorities could take. and they put together a plot to turn him over to the romans. >> but first, jesus would fulfill the ritual duties of his

religion, and eat the passover seder with his friends, a meal known today as the last supper. >> according to our earliest accounts, he knew that he was in trouble and was likely to be arrested. and so he took the symbolic foods of the passover meal and installed new significance in them. >> it is a communion recreated today in churches everywhere. >> this is my body, which will be given up for you. >> it's difficult to know if he actually said these things. our reports are decades later. but i think he certainly had a last supper, and he may well have anticipated that he was going to be killed soon thereafter. >> and according to the gospels, that's exactly what happened. betrayed among the olive trees in the garden of gethsemane by his own disciple, judas iscariot. throughout christian history, judas has been made the arch villain in jesus' death.

yet, just what did this trusted disciple betray? >> it's possible that jesus taught the disciples privately that when the kingdom comes, you will be the rulers and i, of course, will be the king of this coming kingdom. if that's what he was teaching them, then everything else falls in place. what judas betrays to the authorities is that jesus was teaching this in private. the authorities use it as a charge to bring to pontius pilate. >> pontius pilate was the roman governor of judea who had power of life and death over his jewish subjects and often used it. >> pontius pilate, the very year that jesus entered into jerusalem, was in a very difficult political position. and as a consequence of that, he agreed to help caiaphas and to pin the whole blame for what had occurred within the temple, the disturbance there involving jesus, on jesus himself.

♪ >> scholars think that the most accurate part of the gospels comes here at the end. the eyewitness details of his death by crucifixion, perhaps the most gruesome form of capital punishment ever devised. >> it was a case of a state organized around the principle of terror. and you pointed this terror at anyone who was seen as posing a threat or posing a potential threat. that certainly applied in the case of jesus. >> and to many others. the romans crucified up to 10,000 people during jesus' lifetime, often people just like himself. >> it wasn't unusual at all to have somebody, even a prophet, arrested and executed, even in

the gospels, he's killed with two other people that morning. probably they, too, were troublemakers. and the next day pilate probably ordered a couple of other people killed. >> if the crucifixion has always been depicted as an awful death, modern forensic science tells us that it was even worse than we imagined. after three decades as a medical examiner in new york, dr. frederick zugibe has investigated hundreds of homicides. but his research into death by crucifixion is as chilling as anything he's ever seen. a death that began with a ferocious scourging by roman soldiers using a metal-tipped whip. >> the bits of metal would literally enter the skin, even up to the front of the body. the weight would carry it to the

front and rip, rip blood vessels, skin. the pains were literally brutal. >> zugibe says his agony was compounded when jesus was forced to carry the 50-pound crossbeam out of pilate's fortress and through these streets of jerusalem, today called the via della rosa, "the way of sorrows." >> in the condition that jesus was in at this time, the shocky condition that's now being built up, the crowning of thorns adding more shock, jesus would be stumbling, he would be unsteady on his feet. he would fall, he would get up, fall. >> finally jesus arrived at a hill outside the city walls called golgotha, which means the place of the skull. a site that today is covered by the ornate church of the holy sepulcher. in jesus' day, this holy place was a killing field, where a team of roman soldiers awaited their victim and quickly set about their grisly task.

>> the members of it would hold their legs across their body, their arms, while they nailed the nails into their hands. >> though some victims lasted a week, zugibe calculates that jesus spent about six hours on the cross. then it was finished. >> if i were to write a death certificate, i would say the cause of death was due to shock, which causes cardiogenic shock or the failure of the heart as a pump. and that would be the cause of death. >> while politics had a hand in jesus' death, scholars say so, too, did prophecy. they note that jesus' followers believed the prophecies of ancient scripture, that a political messiah, a glorious earthly king, would come to free them from rome. but jesus had a new prophecy, one that was very different from what they had expected. >> he begins to teach them that

the messiah must suffer and die. and that he would go up to jerusalem, he would be tortured, he would be beaten, he would be crucified, he would die and he would rise again. this was not an expectation that they had for the messiah. >> so the gospels say when the disciples showed up at jesus' tomb three days after his death and found it empty, they were astonished. jesus said he would rise from the dead. had his prophecy been fulfilled? check out my new treadmill app. pretty sweet, huh? cute. but don't you have any apps on your phone that can make your life easier? who do you think i am, quicken loans? at quicken loans, we'll provide you with myql mobile. this amazingly useful app allows you to take pictures of your mortgage documents using an iphone or android smart phone... so you can easily send them to us.

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♪ christianity's defining moment came three days after jesus' death, when the gospels tell us he rose from the tomb and appeared to his downcast

followers. in fact, scholars believe the gospels were written backwards, starting with jesus' death, because those were the facts that the apostles knew best and the facts that launched their faith. >> what makes jesus different isn't that his message was different. what makes him different is that after he was executed, his followers claim that he was raised from the dead. christianity begins when jesus' followers proclaim his resurrection. >> but the resurrection is also the point where science stops and faith begins. skeptics have explained the resurrection as a mass hallucination or as a tale told to comfort jesus' followers, but none of those theories explain the mystery of faith. >> the belief that dead people don't rise was absolutely universal across the whole ancient world, with the

exception of the jews who said that, at the moment, dead people don't rise, but one day there will be a resurrection either of the righteous or possibly of everybody. the best historical explanation for the rise of the early christian movement is that jesus really was raised from the dead on the third day. >> while science may not explain the resurrection of jesus, it can illuminate his life even to believers. >> i'm one of those persons, anyway. look at the secular world and say there's wonderful things going on there. and they can be a help to us, even talking about who jesus is. good, let's recognize that. let ourselves be tested by the world. we can only be helped. >> bring in as much of the other evidence as you can. coins, archaeological data. let's do the history thing

properly. and then this figure emerges in three dimensions. and we say, my goodness, this is not just a religious icon. it is not just a wild-eyed revolutionary. it is somebody who is all of that and much, much more. and he's enormously compelling. >> perhaps more compelling in today's world, where religion, more often than not, seems to be a source of conflict. >> jesus as an historical figure provides, now, a point of dialogue among jews, christians and muslims. because the islamic world accepts him as a prophet. the christian world accepts him as son of god and clearly he was a jew. we will not agree from synagogue to church to mosque on what he represents, but at least we all have some claim upon him and that's the basis of conversation. >> so historians will continue to dig for clues in the dust of the holy land. sifting through new evidence and re-examining the old, all to